Collections and Recollections Part 13

The historic a.s.sociations, half gay, half sad, of the week on which we are just entering tempt me to linger on this fascinating theme, and I cannot ill.u.s.trate it better than by quoting the concluding paragraphs from a sermon, which now has something of the dignity of fulfilled prophecy, and which was preached by Sydney Smith in St. Paul's Cathedral on the Sunday after the Queen's accession.

The sermon is throughout a n.o.ble composition, grandly conceived and admirably expressed. It begins with some grave reflections on the "folly and nothingness of all things human" as exemplified by the death of a king. It goes on to enforce on the young Queen the paramount duties of educating her people, avoiding war, and cultivating personal religion.

It concludes with the following pa.s.sage, which in its letter, or at least in its spirit, might well find a place in some of to-morrow's sermons:--"The Patriot Queen, whom I am painting, reverences the National Church, frequents its wors.h.i.+p, and regulates her faith by its precepts; but she withstands the encroachments and keeps down the ambition natural to Establishments, and, by rendering the privileges of the Church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon and adds duration to that wise and magnificent inst.i.tution. And then this youthful Monarch, profoundly but wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon G.o.d, and seeks from the Gospel of His blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this congregation upon their bended knees to pray it may be realized. What limits to the glory and happiness of the native land if the Creator should in His mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy? And if, giving them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years, what glory! what happiness! what joy!

what bounty of G.o.d! I of course can only expect to see the beginning of such a splendid period; but when I do see it I shall exclaim with the pious Simeon--'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.'"

As respects the avoidance of war, the event has hardly accorded with the aspiration. It is melancholy to recall the idealist enthusiasms which preceded the Exhibition of 1851, and to contrast them with the realities of the present hour. Then the arts of industry and the compet.i.tions of peace were to supplant for ever the science of bloodshed. Nations were to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and men were not to learn war any more. And this was on the eve of the Crimea--the most ruinous, the most cruel, and the least justifiable of all campaigns. In one corner of the world or another, the war-drum has throbbed almost without intermission from that day to this.

But when we turn to other aspirations the retrospect is more cheerful.

Slavery has been entirely abolished, and, with all due respect to Mr.

George Curzon, is not going to be re-established under the British flag.

The punishment of death, rendered infinitely more impressive, and therefore more deterrent, by its withdrawal from the public gaze, is reserved for offences which even Romilly would not have condoned. The diminution of crime is an acknowledged fact. Better laws and improved inst.i.tutions--judicial, political, social, sanitary--we flatter ourselves that we may claim. National Education dates from 1870, and its operation during a quarter of a century has changed the face of the industrial world. Queen Victoria in her later years reigns over an educated people.

Of the most important theme of all--our national advance in religion, morality, and the principles of humane living--I have spoken in previous chapters, and this is not the occasion for anything but the briefest recapitulation. "Where is boasting? It is excluded." There is much to be thankful for, much to encourage: something to cause anxiety, and nothing to justify bombast. No one believes more profoundly than I do in the providential mission of the English race, and the very intensity of my faith in that mission makes me even painfully anxious that we should interpret it aright. Men who were undergraduates at Oxford in the 'seventies learned the interpretation, in words of unsurpa.s.sable beauty, from John Ruskin:--

"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a nation, to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now finally betray or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of n.o.ble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive.

"Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinded by its brightness, and means of transit and communication given to us which have made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. One kingdom--but who is to be its King? Is there to be no King in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene Empires of Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of Kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, wors.h.i.+pped in her strange valour of good will towards men?"

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Sunday, June 20, 1897.

XXII.

"PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS."

The celebrations of the past week[26] have set us all upon a royal tack.

Diary-keepers have turned back to their earliest volumes for stories of the girl-queen; there has been an unprecedented run on the _Annual Register_ for 1837; and every rusty print of Princess Victoria in the costume of Kate Nickleby has been paraded as a pearl of price. As I always pride myself on following what Mr. Matthew Arnold used to call "the great mundane movement," I have been careful to obey the impulse of the hour. I have cudgelled my memory for Collections and Recollections suitable to this season of retrospective enthusiasm. Last week I endeavoured to touch some of the more serious aspects of the Jubilee, but now that the great day has come and gone--"Bedtime, Hal, and all well"--a lighter handling of the majestic theme may not be esteemed unpardonable.

Those of my fellow-chroniclers who have blacked themselves all over for the part have acted on the principle that no human life can be properly understood without an exhaustive knowledge of its grandfathers and grandmothers. They have resuscitated George III. and called Queen Charlotte from her long home. With a less heroic insistence on the historic method, I leave grandparents out of sight, and begin my gossip with the Queen's uncles. Of George IV. it is less necessary that I should speak, for has not his character been drawn by Thackeray in his _Lectures on the Four Georges?_

"The dandy of sixty, who bows with a grace, And has taste in wigs, collars, cuira.s.ses, and lace; Who to tricksters and fools leaves the State and its treasure, And, while Britain's in tears, sails about at his pleasure,"

was styled, as we all know, "the First Gentleman in Europe." I forget if I have previously narrated the following instance of gentlemanlike conduct. If I have, it will bear repet.i.tion. The late Lord Charles Russell (1807-1894), when a youth of eighteen, had just received a commission in the Blues, and was commanded, with the rest of his regiment, to a full-dress ball at Carlton House, where the King then held his Court. Unluckily for his peace of mind, the young subaltern dressed at his father's house, and, not being used to the splendid paraphernalia of the Blues' uniform, he omitted to put on his aiguillette. Arrived at Carlton House the company, before they could enter the ball-room, had to advance in single file along a corridor in which the old King, bewigged and bestarred, was seated on a sofa. When the hapless youth who lacked the aiguillette approached the presence, he heard a very high voice exclaim, "Who is this d--d fellow?" Retreat was impossible, and there was nothing for it but to shuffle on and try to pa.s.s the King without further rebuke. Not a bit of it. As he neared the sofa the King exclaimed, "Good evening, sir. I suppose you are the regimental doctor?" and the imperfectly-accoutred youth, covered with confusion as with a cloak, fled blus.h.i.+ng into the ball-room, and hid himself from further observation. And yet the narrator of this painful story always declared that George IV. could be very gracious when the fancy took him; that he was uniformly kind to children; and that on public occasions his manner was the perfection of kingly courtesy. His gorgeous habits and profuse expenditure made him strangely popular. The people, though they detested his conduct, thought him "every inch a King." Lord Shaftesbury, noting in his diary for the 19th of May 1849 the attempt of Hamilton upon the Queen's life, writes:--"The profligate George IV. pa.s.sed through a life of selfishness and sin without a single proved attempt to take it. This mild and virtuous young woman has four times already been exposed to imminent peril."

The careers of the King's younger brothers and sisters would fill a volume of "queer stories." Of the Duke of York Mr. Goldwin Smith genially remarks that "the only meritorious action of his life was that he once risked it in a duel." The Duke of Clarence--Burns's "Young royal Tarry Breeks"--lived in disreputable seclusion till he ascended the throne, and then was so excited by his elevation that people thought he was going mad. The Duke of c.u.mberland was the object of a popular detestation of which the grounds can be discovered in the _Annual Register_ for 1810. The Duke of Suss.e.x made two marriages in defiance of the Royal Marriage Act, and took a political part as active on the Liberal side as that of the Duke of c.u.mberland among the Tories. The Duke of Cambridge is chiefly remembered by his grotesque habit (recorded, by the way, in _Happy Thoughts_) of making loud responses of his own invention to the service in church. "Let us pray," said the clergyman: "By all means," said the Duke. The clergyman begins the prayer for rain: the Duke exclaims, "No good as long as the wind is in the east."

_Clergyman_: "'Zacchaeus stood forth and said, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.'"

_Duke_: "Too much, too much; don't mind t.i.thes, but can't stand that."

To two of the Commandments, which I decline to discriminate, the Duke's responses were--"Quite right, quite right, but very difficult sometimes;'" and "No, no! It was my brother Ernest did that."

Those who care to pursue these curious byways of not very ancient history are referred to the unfailing Greville; to Lady Anne Hamilton's _Secret History of the Court of England;_ and to the _Recollections of a Lady of Quality_, commonly ascribed to Lady Charlotte Bury. The closer our acquaintance with the manners and habits of the last age, even in what are called "the highest circles," the more wonderful will appear the social transformation which dates from her Majesty's accession.

Thackeray spoke the words of truth and soberness when, after describing the virtues and the limitations of George III., he said: "I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre a wiser rule and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure that the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue."

For the earlier years of the Queen's reign Greville continues to be a fairly safe guide, though his footing at the palace was by no means so intimate as it had been in the roistering days of George IV. and William IV. Of course, her Majesty's own volumes and Sir Theodore Martin's _Life of the Prince Consort_ are of primary authority. Interesting glimpses are to be caught in the first volume of Bishop Wilberforce's Life, ere yet his tergiversation in the matter of Bishop Hampden had forfeited the Royal favour; and the historian of the future will probably make great use of the Letters of Sarah Lady Lyttelton--Governess, to the Queen's children--which, being printed for private circulation, are unluckily withheld from the present generation.

A pleasing instance of the ultra-German etiquette fomented by Prince Albert was told me by an eye-witness of the scene. The Prime Minister and his wife were dining at Buckingham Palace very shortly after they had received an addition to their family. When the ladies retired to the drawing-room after dinner, the Queen said most kindly to the Premier's wife, "I know you are not very strong yet, Lady----; so I beg you will sit down. And, when the Prince comes in, Lady D---- shall stand in front of you." This device of screening a breach of etiquette by hiding it behind the portly figure of a British Matron always struck me as extremely droll.

Courtly etiquette, with the conditions out of which it springs and its effect upon the character of those who are subjected to it, has, of course, been a favourite theme of satirists time out of mind, and there can scarcely be a more fruitful one. There are no heights to which it does not rise, nor depths to which it does not sink. In the service for the Queen's Accession the Christological psalms are boldly transferred to the Sovereign by the calm subst.i.tution of "her" for "Him." A few years back--I do not know if it is so now--I noticed that in the prayer-books in St. George's Chapel at Windsor all the p.r.o.nouns which referred to the Holy Trinity were spelt with small letters, and those which referred to the Queen with capitals. So much for the heights of etiquette, and for its depths we will go to Thackeray's account of an incident stated to have occurred on the birth of the Duke of Connaught:

"Lord John he next alights.

And who comes here in haste?

The Hero of a Hundred Fights, The caudle for to taste.

"Then Mrs. Lily the nuss, Towards them steps with joy; Says the brave old Duke, 'Come tell to us.

Is it a gal or boy?'

"Says Mrs. L. to the Duke, 'Your Grace, it is a _Prince_'

And at that nurse's bold rebuke He did both laugh and wince."

Such was the etiquette of the Royal nursery in 1850; but little Princes, even though ushered into the world under such very impressive circ.u.mstances, grow up into something not very unlike other little boys when once they go to school. Of course, in former days young Princes were educated at home by private tutors. This was the education of the Queen's uncles and of her sons. A very different experience has been permitted to her grandsons. The Prince of Wales's boys, as we all remember, were middies; Princess Christian's sons were at Wellington; Prince Arthur of Connaught is at Eton. There he is to be joined next year by the little Duke of Albany, who is now at a private school in the New Forest. He has among his schoolfellows his cousin Prince Alexander of Battenberg, of whom a delightful story is current just now.[27] Like many other little boys, he ran short of pocket money, and wrote an ingenious letter to his august Grandmother asking for some slight pecuniary a.s.sistance. He received in return a just rebuke, telling him that little boys should keep within their limits, and that he must wait till his allowance next became due. Shortly afterwards the undefeated little Prince resumed the correspondence in something like the following form: "My dear Grandmamma,--I am sure you will be glad to know that I need not trouble you for any money just now, for I sold your last letter to another boy here for 30s."

As Royalty emerges from infancy and boyhood into the vulgar and artificial atmosphere of the grown-up world, it is daily and hourly exposed to such sycophancy that Royal persons acquire, quite unconsciously, a habit of regarding every subject in heaven and earth in its relation to themselves. An amusing instance of this occurred a few years ago on an occasion when one of our most popular Princesses expressed a gracious wish to present a very smart young gentleman to the Queen. This young man had a remarkably good opinion of himself; was the eldest son of a peer, and a Member of Parliament; and it happened that he was also related to a lady who belonged to one of the Royal Households. So the Princess led the young exquisite to the august presence, and then sweetly said, "I present Mr. ----, who is"--not Lord Blank's eldest son or Member for Loams.h.i.+re, but--"nephew to dear Aunt Cambridge's lady." My young friend told me that he had never till that moment realized how completely he lacked a position of his own in the universe of created being.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] June 20-27, 1897.

[27] All this is now ancient history. 1903.

XXIII.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

Archbishop Tait wrote on the 11th of February 1877: "Attended this week the opening of Parliament, the Queen being present, and wearing for the first time, some one says, her crown as Empress of India. Lord Beaconsfield was on her left side, holding aloft the Sword of State. At five the House again was crammed to see him take his seat; and Slingsby Beth.e.l.l, equal to the occasion, read aloud the writ in very distinct tones. All seemed to be founded on the model, 'What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?'"

_Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j'ai vecu pres d'elle_. For the last month[28] our thoughts have been fixed upon the Queen to the exclusion of all else; but now the regal splendours of the Jubilee have faded. The majestic theme is, in fact, exhausted; and we turn, by a natural transition, from the Royal Rose to its subservient primrose; from the wisest of Sovereigns to the wiliest of Premiers; from the character, habits, and life of the Queen to the personality of that extraordinary child of Israel who, though he was not the Rose, lived uncommonly near it; and who, more than any other Minister before or since his day, contrived to identify himself in the public view with the Crown itself.

There is nothing invidious in this use of a racial term. It was one of Lord Beaconsfield's finest qualities that he laboured all through his life to make his race glorious and admired. To a Jewish boy--a friend of my own--who was presented to him in his old age he said: "You and I belong to a race which knows how to do everything but fail."

Is Lord Beaconsfield's biography ever to be given to the world? Not in our time, at any rate, if we may judge by the signs. Perhaps Lord Rowton finds it more convenient to live on the vague but splendid antic.i.p.ations of future success than on the admitted and definite failure of a too cautious book. Perhaps he finds his personal dignity enhanced by those mysterious flittings to Windsor and Osborne, where he is understood to be comparing ma.n.u.scripts and revising proofs with an Ill.u.s.trious Personage. But there is the less occasion to lament Lord Rowton's tardiness, because we already possess Mr. Froude's admirable monograph on Lord Beaconsfield in the series of _The Queen's Prime Ministers_, and an extremely clear-sighted account of his relations with the Crown in Mr. Reginald Brett's _Yoke of Empire_.

My present purpose is not controversial. I do not intend to estimate the soundness of Lord Beaconsfield's opinions or the permanent value of his political work. It is enough to recall what the last German Amba.s.sador--Count Munster--told me, and what, in a curtailed form, has been so often quoted. Prince Bismarck said, "I think nothing of their Lord Salisbury. He is only a lath painted to look like iron. But that old Jew means business." This is merely a parenthesis. I am at present concerned only with Lord Beaconsfield's personal traits. When I first encountered him he was already an old man. He had left far behind those wonderful days of the black velvet dress-coat lined with white satin, the "gorgeous gold flowers on a splendidly embroidered waistcoat," the jewelled rings worn outside the white gloves, the evening cane of ivory inlaid with gold and adorned with a ta.s.sel of black silk. "We were none of us fools," said one of his most brilliant contemporaries, "and each man talked his best; but we all agreed that the cleverest fellow in the party was the young Jew in the green velvet trousers." Considerably in the background, too, were the grotesque performances of his rural life, when, making up for the character of a country gentleman, he "rode an Arabian mare for thirty miles across country without stopping," attended Quarter Sessions in drab breeches and gaiters, and wandered about the lanes round Hughenden pecking up primroses with a spud.

When I first saw Mr. Disraeli, as he then was, all these follies were matters of ancient history. They had played their part, and were discarded. He was dressed much like other gentlemen of the 'Sixties--in a black frock coat, gray or drab trousers, a waistcoat cut rather low, and a black cravat which went once round the neck and was tied in a loose bow. In the country his costume was a little more adventurous. A black velveteen jacket, a white waistcoat, a Tyrolese hat, lent picturesque incident and variety to his appearance. But the brilliant colours were reserved for public occasions. I never saw him look better than in his peer's robes of scarlet and ermine when he took his seat in the House of Lords, or more amazing than when, tightly b.u.t.toned up in the Privy Councillor's uniform of blue and gold, he stood in the "general circle" at the Drawing-room or Levee. In his second Administration he looked extraordinarily old. His form was shrunk, and his face of a death-like pallor. Ever since an illness in early manhood he had always dyed his hair, and the contrast between the artificial blackness and the natural paleness was extremely startling. The one sign of vitality which his appearance presented was the brilliancy of his dark eyes, which still flashed with penetrating l.u.s.tre.

The immense powers of conversation of which we read so much in his early days, when he "talked like a racehorse approaching the winning post," and held the whole company spellbound by his tropical eloquence, had utterly vanished. He seemed, as he was, habitually oppressed by illness or discomfort. He sat for hours together in moody silence. When he opened his lips it was to pay an elaborate (and sometimes misplaced) compliment to a lady, or to utter an epigrammatic judgment on men or books, which recalled the conversational triumphs of his prime. Skill in phrase-making was perhaps the literary gift which he most admired. In a conversation with Mr. Matthew Arnold shortly before his death he said, with a touch of pathos, "You are a fortunate man. The young men read you; they no longer read me. And you have invented phrases which every one quotes--such as 'Philistinism' and 'Sweetness and Light.'" It was a characteristic compliment, for he dearly loved a good phrase. From the necessities of his position as a fighting politician, his own best performances in that line were sarcasms; and indeed sarcasm was the gift in which from first to last, in public and in private, in writing and in speaking, he peculiarly excelled. To recall the instances would be to rewrite his political novels and to transcribe those attacks on Sir Robert Peel which made his fame and fortune.

It was my good fortune when quite a boy to be present at the debates in the House of Commons on the Tory Reform Bill of 1867. Never were Mr.

Disraeli's gifts of sarcasm, satire, and ridicule so richly displayed, and never did they find so responsive a subject as Mr. Gladstone. As schoolboys say, "he rose freely." The Bill was read a second time without a division, but in Committee the fun waxed fast and furious, and was marked by the liveliest encounters between the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. At the conclusion of one of these pa.s.sages of arms Mr. Disraeli gravely congratulated himself on having such a substantial piece of furniture as the table of the House between himself and his energetic opponent. In May 1867 Lord Houghton writes thus: "I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seems quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy, who, he says, is gradually driving all ideas of political honour out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism." Was it cynicism, or some related but more agreeable quality, which suggested Mr. Disraeli's reply to the wealthy manufacturer, newly arrived in the House of Commons, who complimented him on his novels? "I can't say I've read them myself. Novels are not in my line. But my daughters tell me they are uncommonly good." "Ah," said the Leader of the House, in his deepest note, "this, indeed, is fame."

The mention of novels reminds me of a story which I heard twenty years ago; when Mr. Mallock produced his first book--the admirable _New Republic_. A lady who was his constant friend and benefactress begged Lord Beaconsfield to read the book and say something civil about it. The Prime Minister replied with a groan, "Ask me anything, dear lady, except this. I am an old man. Do not make me read your young friend's romances." "Oh, but he would be a great accession to the Tory party, and a civil word from you would secure him for ever." "Oh--well, then, give me a pen and a sheet of paper," and sitting down in the lady's drawing-room, he wrote: "Dear Mrs.----,--I am sorry that I cannot dine with you, but I am going down to Hughenden for a week. Would that my solitude could be peopled by the bright creations of Mr. Mallock's fancy!" "Will that do for your young friend?" Surely, as an appreciation of a book which one has not read, this is absolutely perfect.